CloseImageViewView image “After the Poetry Reading, Black (with annotations) 3”After the Poetry Reading, Black (with annotations) 3Uploaded August, 2024Tags listtagscreativityraceartannotationscommunitypoem
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CloseImageViewView image “After the Poetry Reading, Black (with annotations) 2”After the Poetry Reading, Black (with annotations) 2Uploaded August, 2024Tags listtagscreativityraceartannotationscommunitypoem
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![112
turned to leave the stage,
but stage itself seemed turning,
follow-moving, circling me,
enfolding me upfront--though I felt leaving down the aisle
not looking back--until some curtain roase
and audience was new, was Black,
was waiting.
Must be some trick my Trans-s-lator knew:
pushed in that chromobutton “Black”
and only heard the beating of my heart;
kept pushing it till floor rose up on sounds
like hoofbeats on the grass,
booBOOF- booBOOF- booBOOF-, and faster,
till breath around was tight as if
the climax of some play was on
and I was sitting in the crowd--
booBOOF- booBOOF- booBOOF- as all in the air
[*A listener at City College admired this breathing technique.*]
The brother next to me turned like a page
close to my eyes;
“ThaCHU he was talking bout?” he said.
He meant the short Black man upfront
who meant the poem I mean to write
as I said “Yes”
up-coming from The Veil…
[*Du Bois’s well-known “veil” idea in The Souls of Black Folk.*]
A neat, pale hand extended blocked my path](https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/system/resource/2/c/6/2c68041e-447e-42fd-b316-65c9c437d5ce/attachment/0e236a4541d4b0bd23f9369e08dc3493.jpg)
![109
[*This poem, worked on in France, Poland, and Holland, developed from my poetry reading in Toulouse after which a colleague, Annice Mouyen (her later name, reported to me the 1st-stanza comments of some young man in the audience.*]
After the Poetry Reading, Black
His friend, the red hair and tight jeans,
took back her pen, left me THIS piece of cake:
“He’s disappointed”--meant this due half down the aisle,
himself so blond surveying,
counting those who cared--
added what she meant, sweeping off the crumbs
with “You’re not Black enough, he said.”
But do they EVER say, I thought,
just what they mean?--and didn’t even see
her fine retreat,
but went behind The Veil…
Back there with Truth, and Prosser, Turner,
[*Sojourner Truth, Gabriel Prosser (slave rebel), Nat Turner (slave rebel), Frederick Douglass, a truly great man.*]
whipped out my pocket Trans-s-lator
model Double-Oh-Daddy-oh-Douglass,
pushed chromobuttons “Blond” and “Reddish,”
laid it ‘longside the echoes in the aisle
till cake came back in Trans-s-lator slices
hard and sure as this?
“He’s disappointed:
wanted to frolic in the backyard of your mind,
smell weeds, rip up the tender shoots, peel back the shade,](https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/system/resource/0/4/4/04441135-b1b5-461e-a5c4-9f00d97124d4/attachment/06d02c7db6d0d1c247a4c787890e2568.jpg)
![113
till I politely shook it, groping elsewhere in my mind
through new poems Black enough
(the shock that twitched his face said so)
to leave a scar.
“He’s disappointed,” I thought.
And I knew
what I meant.
1976-77
1978
113
Racism in France
[*Invited to dine by Christian et Jeannine Renaud, Friend friends, I heard the wife say, after my comments on American racism, the opening line here. By no means naïve, they could not fully grasp my attitude; and this poem cannot fully express it. The only details that came from their 5th arrondissement apartment are the 1st line, the cherry pie, the daughter, and the TV to which she escaped.*]
“But there’s racism in France too.”
She said it almost tenderly,
lifting the dessert,
the glazed cherries gleaming on the pie,
it’s maiden slice for me, the guest.
I nodded, noncommittal, at the second piece,
their blondish daughter reaching for it,
[*Marie Helene Renaud, now married.*]
Quick, like almost nine years old,
her father’s eye a brake that could not hold;
her mother’s hand a lesson lost:
in serving him, it’s careful demonstration
was outmaneuvered in the in the nearest room
by Jacqueline’s favorite TV program,
[*I changed Marie-Helene’s name.*]
“Once Upon a Time,” her anarchy kept low.](https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/system/resource/0/5/4/05481b18-dbfe-4ac8-93aa-3b6043cccf30/attachment/0c0289c13f80b7f4f1b233f0155cb5ea.jpg)